Sadiq Khan was grilled by ITV’s Paul Brand at the Pride hustings last night on his top aide Shueb Salar, who resigned in disgrace two weeks ago:

Brand: “You employed this guy. You worked closely with him. We all work with colleagues, you kind of get a sense of what someone is like. How could you not realise that someone you were working with day in day out held this kind of view?”

Khan: “Sure. I mean, throughout the time he was employed with me there was no hint or evidence at all of any of these sorts of comments. In my parliamentary office we had five members of staff, four women and him. At no time during the course of his employment did he exhibit any of the sort of things that his comments allude to.”

This is demonstrably untrue – the video of Salar brandishing a gun was posted in autumn last year, while he was working for Khan. Salar favourited a tweet about physically attacking Tory voters last May, again while he was working for Khan. He wrote that the Lee Rigby murder was “probably fake“, as well as posting a string of tweets about “faggots“. And who knows which of Sadiq’s staffers was responsible for following ISIS supporters on Twitter. Salar was up to no good during his employment with Sadiq, a fact he is now conveniently brushing over…